Is a Tea Party Triumph at Hand?

Yet the principled resistance of the Tea Party Caucus in the House has put their leader right across the table from Barack Obama to negotiate the final terms of armistice in the debt-ceiling battle of 2011.

Today is July 22. On this day, it was said, either Congress will have voted to raise the debt ceiling, or the markets will have panicked and America will be on the road to default on Aug. 2.

House leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor are, as of this writing, sitting with Obama negotiating terms. And yesterday, the stock market surged in anticipation they were close to an agreement. If Boehner and Cantor are dealing from strength, it is thanks to the Tea Party’s rejection of previous deals.

The caucus held Boehner’s feet to the fire, and Boehner is the stronger for it.

And so, today, it is Democrats who are in rebellion. For Obama has reportedly signed on to specific and real reductions, $3 trillion worth, that include cuts in future costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

America’s hirsute welfare state may be about to get a haircut.

“Who dares, wins,” is the motto of the Special Air Service, the Brits’ answer to America’s Navy SEALs. While no final deal has been cut, House Republicans have made significant gains.

They passed “Cut, Cap and Balance,” a Tea Party plan to cut federal spending to 20 percent of gross domestic product, cap federal programs and secure a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.

Second, Obama has offered to put budget cuts upfront to get a debt-ceiling increase. This would be insurance against what happened to Ronald Reagan, where tax hikes agreed to were enacted and the budget cuts lost somewhere along the trail.

Third, the president has apparently agreed to tax reform, whereby a host of deductions, exemptions and tax credits would be discarded from the code by the GOP in return for tax rate reductions for businesses and individuals.

This is Reaganism.

Indeed, this writer was with Reagan at the Tokyo Economic Summit of 1986 when word came that Sen. Bob Packwood and the finance committee were about to agree to cut the top tax rate to 28 percent, in return for eliminating tax deductions and tax breaks for business and individuals. The reaction of Air Force One, without seeing the precise terms of the deal, was, “Go for it!”

Obama’s proposal appears to contain a non-performance clause, however. If no deal on tax reform is reached, at the end of 2012, the Bush tax cuts will not be extended for high-end earners. That would be a defeat for the Tea Party, the GOP and the country.

Still, there remains no question which way America and Europe are going — indeed, are being forced to go by the irresponsibility of a generation of political leaders. Consider.

Obama has moved in months from an expansive budget that could not get a single vote in the Senate to negotiating with a Republican House whose leaders’ feet are being held to the fire by Tea Party true believers.

When the discussion is of $3 trillion in budget cuts and reducing tax rates, in return for giving up tax loopholes, Big Government is in retreat and a conservative hour may be at hand.

In Albany, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, son of liberal lion Mario, has just gotten an agreement from state employees to give up increases in pay raises and pension hikes they had already won, to save union jobs.

In Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat who shut down the government to force the GOP to agree to tax increases, has raised a white flag and accepted the Republican “no new taxes” position.

“Trust but verify” was Reagan’s watchword in negotiating arms control with the Soviet Union. The principle should surely apply to any deal that Boehner cuts.

We are 10 days from the day of reckoning. On Aug. 2, the U.S. Government, as of now, will have no legal authority to borrow, and tax revenue will fall sharply below what the U.S. Government needs to meet its obligations.

To avoid a partial shutdown of the government and a rattling of the stock and bond markets, for which the GOP will be blamed, the House should agree to a short-term extension of the debt ceiling.

And for every month increase in that debt ceiling, the House should impose a cost of $110 billion in hard budget cuts.

As we have seen from Obama’s repeated retreats, he needs an increase in the debt ceiling now, as does the country. He will have to accept any increase the House gives him, or veto it and risk a plunge in the markets, which would assume either a U.S. debt default or a U.S. debt downgrade.

This tournament is not over, but it was Tea Party hardball that got the GOP to the finals.

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29 Responses to Is a Tea Party Triumph at Hand?

Obama explicitly said what he wanted in his Friday PM news conference – he wants a “debt extension till 2013.”

He does not want a “grand deal” – he does NOT want to cut social programs and he does not want to hurt the economy with more taxes – he wants to get REELECTED. That is why he reneged on the deal with the House – he wanted these negotiations to fail. Obama wants to say “see, I saved your SS, they want to hurt the old folks” – and he wants to spend more on stimulus with no debt limit to worry about.

Now what the Republicans must do is give Obama is a trillion dollar debt extension with a trillion dollars of spending cuts (negotiable) – take it or leave it!

This will put these same questions up before the nation just before the election – exactly what Obama does not want.

Good article, but please don’t use “Eric Cantor” and “Tea Party” in the same sentence.

Cantor is against everything the Tea Party stands for. He voted for the Wall Street bailouts and he arranged for a 30 billion dollar gift for Israel just as the American economy was going to go into a tail spin.

After the next election there’s good reason to hope that Cantor will be removed from the leadership, along with a lot of other worthless establishment Republicans.

Pat –
You may write well, but you can’t do arithmetic. If the budget is capped at 20% of the GDP and the current GDP is roughly 15 trillion dollars, that leaves us with a 3 trillion dollar budget. Currently we have tax revenues equal to 14% of the GDP, or 2 trillion, one hundred billion dollars. This means that we have a guaranteed deficit of 900 billion dollars per year unless taxes are raised to cover the shortfall. Put differently, it means that we will have a structural deficit of 6% of GDP each year, endlessly (forget the constitutional amendment, dreamer).

Do you call this a triumph? Are you serious? Using your logic, you could claim that General Custer was the real victor at Little Big Horn because he used up so many Indian arrowheads.

How is a Tea Party triumph good for the average American? Why must Social Security and Medicare be cut before the American Empire? Why isn’t ending the unconstitutional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our equally unconstitutional military misadvenetures into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya on the table? Why isn’t reigning in the Empire and ending these outdated alliances like NATO and our alliances with the Japanese and South Koreans on the table? Why isn’t closing the foreign military installations and bringing all our troops home on the table? Why isn’t reinstituting tariffs for foreign manufacturers and tax breaks for domestic manufacturers on the table?

If you ask me I say the Tea Party is doing the bidding of the international corporations that have absolutely no loyalty to this country or to its citizens but only to the bottom line? America must pay its debts or go into default. However there is alot of fat to be cut in our foreign policy budget before we even consider cutting or privatizing the lifeline for many of our seniors, widows and disabled which is social security and Medicare.

“Cantor is against everything the Tea Party stands for. He voted for the Wall Street bailouts and he arranged for a 30 billion dollar gift for Israel just as the American economy was going to go into a tail spin.”

Not until Cantor opposes the US’s annual tribute to Israel can we honestly call him fiscally conservative (or responsible).

The foot soldiers in the Tea Party (not their corporate puppet-masters) are about to be confronted with their own intellectual inconsistency. The minute any significant cuts are made to SS or Medicare, most of them will turn into LBJ Democrats.

These people are scared and ignorant. Easy pickings for cynical Norquistas and Kochs.

Conservatives vs Radicals. And who is who is becoming very complicated.

Buchanan: “For Obama has reportedly signed on to specific and real reductions, $3 trillion worth, that include cuts in future costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid…Obama’s proposal appears to contain a non-performance clause, however. If no deal on tax reform is reached, at the end of 2012, the Bush tax cuts will not be extended for high-end earners. That would be a defeat for the Tea Party, the GOP and the country.”

I agree that the Social Security and government medical programs need reform, but how many high-end earners are banksters and free trade corporatists who have been systematically off shoring American jobs for decades to increase their profit margins and feather their own nests? How many are part of the army of wealthy white collar accountants and lawyers that enabled this plunder of American manufacturing and industry?

Additionally, how many are part of the 171,689 federal government workers making over $150k per year?

Not going after the wealthy makes sense only when they’re patriotic America-firsters investing in America; it doesn’t make sense when they’re parasites and plunderers pursuing a Globalist agenda. Why reward these, and put the screws to those on fixed income Social Security who would spend their money in America and not hoard it away in some offshore account?

Pat, it looks like you jumped the gun. Last night I followed news of the debt deal collapse on that liberal oasis, MSNBC, where you also work, and I was struck by Lawrence O’Donnel’s take on the issue. He interpreted it as a master political stroke by Obama, who will now, in O’Donnel’s opinion, get a clean debt raising bill that extends until 2013, which is what he wanted all along. That way he avoids offending many Democratic constituencies by having to cut favored programs. I’m not sure he will get such a deal, but, even if he did, how will the debt rating agencies react? Didn’t some of them say that spending cuts of $400 billion were not enough to avoid a downgrade of the U.S. credit rating? How will they react to a clean bill that cuts no spending? In all likelihood, they will downgrade, and U.S. interests rates will rise, making the problem even worse. And O’Donnel thinks Obama scored a political master stroke? I thought he was a lot smarter than that.

Lawrence O’Donnell did make one important point about the debt deal. I didn’t watch Obama’s press conference, but, as O’Donnell pointed out later, Obama admittedly was basically offering the Republicans $1 in cuts for each $1 in added revenues, rather than the much ballyhooed (by the MSM) 3 to 1 ratio. Since Obama must have known the Republicans couldn’t possibly accept that deal, he was knowingly making an offer which was a deal killer, according to O’Donnell’s interpretation. This is what the transcript of Obama’s press conference says, which bears out O’Donnell’s point:

“Essentially what we had offered Speaker Boehner was over a trillion dollars in cuts to discretionary spending, both domestic and defense. We then offered an additional $650 billion in cuts to entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We believed that it was possible to shape those in a way that preserved the integrity of the system, made them available for the next generation, and did not affect current beneficiaries in an adverse way.

In addition, what we sought was revenues that were actually less than what the Gang of Six signed off on. So you had a bipartisan group of senators, including Republicans who are in leadership in the Senate, calling for what effectively was about $2 trillion above the Republican baseline that they’ve been working off of. What we said was give us $1.2 trillion in additional revenues, which could be accomplished without hiking taxes — tax rates, but could simply be accomplished by eliminating loopholes, eliminating some deductions and engaging in a tax reform process that could have lowered rates generally while broadening the base.”

The statists in America are so out of touch with reality. I keep hearing the same old talking points about taxing the rich more to pay for bigger and bigger government. They must not have any math skills at all.

Anyone who is considering that higher taxes are the answer need only look to Europe to see if works. They tax their rich, and rely on us for their defense. How’s that working out?

We do not have a revenue problem in this country. We have a spending problem. Europe is a glimpse into the future of statist control. Eventually the statists run out of our money.

That is a great idea that I’ve wondered why the Republicans have not explicitly put out.

I.e., Put a gun to Obama’s head. Dare him to veto a debt limit increase simply because it expires before the election in which he wants to continue as our Feckless, Clueless Presidential Idiot-Savant Mediocrity.

“Obama’s proposal appears to contain a non-performance clause, however. If no deal on tax reform is reached, at the end of 2012, the Bush tax cuts will not be extended for high-end earners. That would be a defeat for the Tea Party, the GOP and the country.”

And why would this be? Because we lost on homosexual marriage in New York we’re trying for a new line in the sand, a new shibboleth to say? Since when did conservative support the notion one does not have to pay what one spends for?

Ask yourself why conservatives like Tom Coburn and Larry Crapo would be willing to agree to a bipartisan deal that would include increases in revenue and why persons like Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann would be willing to vote against their own party’s CCB? Maybe because they see the so-called Tea Partiers in the House stubborness not really a matter of principal but a form or ideological mind control exercised by someone who couldn’t get elected to public office himself but has as much fun playing king-maker as Andrew Stern would?, Isn’t this something writers and editors at this magazine like Austin Bramwell have been concerned about when conservatism as a whole.

If persons like Colburn, Paul and Crapo are suspect and need to be expelled, we’ve gone Burkeian concepts to Robspierre solutions. If taxes rates and loopholes becomes something we have to man the barricades for, in the end, we’ll be the losers because at some point, unless the federal and state government is not just cut but significantly reduced and altered from what it is currently doing (and a consensus reached in doing so), people in the middle are going to ask why certain people are exempted from paying taxes to pay for all the government: the rich and the poor. And since one cannot squeeze blood from a turnip, it will be the “Walker’s Point GOP” who will feel it in the populist backlash and the GOP brand once again being “party of rich.” This stigma, which Mr. Buchanan has been trying to erase his entire political career, will further be branded on the party along with their aversion to paying taxes, which will be interpreted as “not paying their fair share.”

[The foot soldiers in the Tea Party (not their corporate puppet-masters) are about to be confronted with their own intellectual inconsistency. The minute any significant cuts are made to SS or Medicare, most of them will turn into LBJ Democrats.]

So true! Why do you suppose the Ryan Plan calls for the FULL funding of Medicare for those born before 1957? Why are these older boomers to get FULL Medicare for perpetuity? Why does the Ryan Plan promote the continuation of the Ponzi scheme for them, only?

It is because these Tea Party oldsters are not true conservatives. They are of the mentality, “End socialism, but do not touch my Medicare!”

I’m all for dismantling the current system, but the question is what system takes over after its done. Does the average American enjoy more of their Constitutional rights or less? Will they have the economic security to enjoy such rights or will they become modern day serfs toiling day in and day out only to recieve a smaller and smaller amount of the fruits of their labor? I don’t want to dismantle the current system only to see a new one even more in the death grip of the international corporations than the one we have today. I agree with Mr. Buchanan on foreign policy and I agree with him on tariffs and the need to reinvigorate and maybe even subsidize American industry to jump start it. However I disagree that the Republican Party and the Tea Party is the way and I firmly disagree that cutting social security, medicare and the collective bargaining rights of government workers is the way. We need reign in the empire, return to our constitutional republic and guarantee the American worker the collective bargaining rights that will ensure him a seat at the table and a voice in Washington DC. We need to reinvigorate American industry and end our dependance on foreign energy not by turning to green industry but by drilling for oil and natural gas within our own borders.

Deny welfare, social security, medicare, education and all other taxpayer funded benefits to foreign parasites and layabouts.

When we let them in they swore they could take care of themselves. Let them do it. Instead, we get this: “For each year of work under the Social Security System, immigrants realize higher benefits than U.S. born, even when their earnings are identical in all years the immigrant has been in the U.S.” Not to mention the zillions of Fed programs that foreigners learn about and exploit before they even go through Customs.

In a phrase, it isn’t, Dmitry Aleksandrovich. These are misguided ideologues somewhat akin in politics to what their rapturist cousins are in eschatology. In fact, in many instances the two pathologies overlap. No matter how it is that any one of these dupes might present clinically, all of them are either in conscious or unwitting service to corporatist and Middle East foreign policy interests thar are responsible for our present condition and who have stolen our democracy out from under us. They are simply tools of the ruling class. And in your enthusiasm for the recreation of an American industrial base, I wouldn’t lose sight of who it would be that would benefit from knee-jerk oil well drilling. It won’t be you or anyone like you, trust me.

Andei I’m paying 400 to 600 dollars a month just for gasoline. How would opening up domestic drilling not benefit me? On the other issues you brought up I know the score. I respect Mr. Buchanan because over the years he has stood up against the tide of mainstream GOP and/or neoconservative opinion and spoken against free trade and spoken against these unconstitutional wars abroad. I respect Mr. Buchanan for that, but I don’t understand his recent enthusiasm for the GOP. Like you I don’t care if they are Tea Party or not, apart from Dr. Ron Paul and his son Rand I think all these folks are the same GOP we had under George W Bush just in different clothing, but the same. Not that I agree on Ron Paul about everything, but I respect the man’s honesty and his truly conservative foreign policy and his wish to end NAFTA, CAFTA and get out of the WTO…not to mention his wish to return to a monetary system based on Gold and silver.

I don’t think cutting America’s meager social programs will amount to much. Gotta cut defense: major budget component there. Tax reform is another key—end the gimmes to the rich and to multinational corps.

Dmitry I’m with you on this one. I don’t take republicans or the Tea Party seriously on budget cuts unless serious defense cuts are on the table. “Conservatives” need to explain why we need to have some sort of military presence in 80 countries, need 700 foreign military bases, have a defense budget that is larger than the rest of the world combined. I want to know why we need to be committed to the defense of Europe long after the Cold War is over. I have zero interest in an American Empire that as no Constitutional authority and zero interest in paying for it. I equally have zero interest in the neocon’s holy crusade to bring “democracy” to the world a form of government Madison called the vilest on earth. Why should any of us be paying for neocon’s modern version of the great crusades? We cannot take either the republicans or the Tea Party seriously on the budget as long as they refuse to put serious defense cuts on the table and right now I don’t see any.

Well, for one thing, with an oil industry that is as free of regulation as our is, you might want to have someone taste your shrimp for you the next time you’re at Seafood Charlie’s with your family. I mean you don’t honestly believe that the price of oil – particularly the prices we experienced in the last two run-ups – is entirely consequent on the interplay of supply and demand, do you? You may wish to consider the role that financial speculation played in these episodes. Germany called for a ban on such speculation in oil markets in 2008, citing hedge fund manipulations as responsible for the then increase:

“I respect Mr. Buchanan for that, but I don’t understand his recent enthusiasm for the GOP.”

That one’s simple. When you spend year after year objecting to the war in Iraq, and cry crocodile tears over the damage the earlier Clinton embargo did to Iraqi kids and then turn around and endorse the Bush presidential candidacy in 2004, you know there’s something diseased about your moral priorities. The illusion here is that Pat Buchanan is somehow an outsider. When all is said and done, the man is entirely a creature of Washington and the system. After 2000, no one would even know Buchanan’s name in 2011 if his fundamental loyalties weren’t acceptably perceived by his media employers. They’re comfortable with him, and that’s one very good reason you shouldn’t be.

Another thought. If you are not familiar with the writing of Paul Craig Roberts I’d venture that you should be. Roberts’ columns appear at a number of sites around the web with disparate viewpoints but I read them at Counterpunch. Here’s his latest:

Andei I am not completely opposed to nationalizing our oil industry to stop the price fixing and gouging. In fact I am not completely opposed to nationalizing several of our national resources to protect them from the multinational corporations. I would just want to make sure that average Americans who own the land or stock in those companies would be compensated at a fair price. As for the thieves at the top. Seize it and redistribute it accordingly…they stole it anyways and its not theirs. Am I a socialist? I’m not a pure socialist. Am I a free market capitalist? No I’m neither…what I am is a working class man who wishes to see a return of the American Republic where every citizen regardless of background and income is guaranteed his Constitutional rights and given a fair playing field to go out and try to make a life for himself and his family or future family. I don’t believe we currently have that ability and we are slipping from being working middle class to being the working poor and many of us are all ready here and we are losing everything while the multinational corporations and the elites who run them are getting wealthier and wealthier. It’s our wealth not theirs. They are stealing from us and we must take it back from them and punish them for their crimes.

“They are stealing from us and we must take it back from them and punish them for their crimes.”

If things continue on as they are at present, one day, almost certainly, there will be a uncomfortable reckoning – a “peoples’ moment”, if you will – in which our democracy is restored. Those responsible for stealing it from us will be arrested, interrogated and tried publically, perhaps in a large sports stadium simply for the pedagogic effect. There likely will be the most tearful confessions, but not a single one of these vermin will escape the justice that awaits them. In that day it will be better to be unemployed, foreclosed upon, and penniless than to have been a politician, a media figure or a lobbyist.

I am not a Marxist/Leninist Vyshinsky but I do believe those who are responsible for destroying the American Middle Class should be shipped to work camps in Alaska to crush rocks on the frozen tundra. These are thieves and if we did what they were doing even at a small fraction of the scale we’d be rotting away in a Federal pen. Why should these folks be allowed to steal from the American people? Why because they pay off the politicians on both sides of the aisle on Capitol HIll. It’s going to take the American Middle Class becoming organized and it’s going to take a general strike and hopefully that would be enough to get our seat at the table and our voice heard but if it doesn’t suffice or if the powers that be try to violently put down such a general strike then we are going to have to take it to the next level and do whatever we have to do to take our country back.